A Proposition for Reenactment

The chapter provides an examination of how the photographs by Stan Douglas use disco—the discotheque as a place, disco as the music that is played and heard in that place, and disco dancing as the social dance form that occurs in that place—and the rebel insurgency in Angola to suggest that fictional reenactments address an alternative approach to the false separation of history from time. A close reading of the photographs finds associative congruencies between African fighters, the Afro-beat of disco music, and the African-American roots of disco culture; between dressing for war and dressing up (including masking and cross-dressing) for disco; between the theater of war and the theatrics of disco dancing; between the homosocial behaviors on view in Angola and the homosexual roots of disco culture.